So I debuted my story at screenwriting class and I'm back to my original short story idea. The screenplay will be about baseball playing son who has to contront his estranged father and deal with his resentment and hatred of his father. My screen writing teacher called it heart felt family drama. GADS!!! I was the only one in class writing a heart felt family drama. Everybody in class was writing action films, films with lots of action or travel or comedies, dark humor, and I'm writing a family drama.

I don't know. It's my curse, it's my karma and it sucks! I don't know. The stories that I like nobody likes, the stories that I don't think are interesting everybody wants to hear about. I hate this. I swear to god, I can't tell what's good and what's not good. I can't divorce myself from my own work and step back to see whether it's good or not. I have to have other people tell me. I hate that.

I'm like thinking who the hell would pay $9.50 to watch a heart felt family drama. How boring!!! Do people really want to see dysfunctional families getting it together on the big screen. Haven't they had enough of that in our life? Or are people out there leading such broken and messed up lives that they have to fantasize about getting healthy?

I don't know. I'm a very whole person. I'm pro active as hell about therapy, personal growth and development and staying and being happy. I don't have a lot of relationships in my life that haven't been healed and the ones that aren't healed, I'm okay with them the way they are.

I feel like I'm 21 years old and my therapist is telling me I've got more awareness that 99.9% of the people in the world. I can hear my therapist's voice so clearly saying "most people don't look at their action and themselves the way you do and you have to remember that." I found it shocking then and years later I still don't understand that. How can people not be aware of how their actions affect others? I'm aware. Aren't there other people in the world like me? My therapist said no.

The last time I was in a seminar and dealt with my father issue, half the people in the seminar called their father on the break. I had people coming up to me after that for a couple of years to thank me for inspiring them to heal their relationship with their father. People who said they'd been in that seminar with me, most of whom I didn't recognize. People who thanked me for saving their life.

Is this heart felt father/son family drama that I'm supposed to write supposed to do the same thing? Inspire people to heal their relationship with their father? I don't know. I'm at the point now where I just have to write this story because it needs to be written. I have no idea how I'm gong to write this story. It seems so boring to me. But my writing teacher said to write it ike it's in real time. What does it all mean? Honestly I don't want to inspire people, I want to entertain people, make them laugh, make them think abou stuff. Is healing people entertaining? It's free therapy that's for sure.

I swear to god, it's my curse and my karma. Everytime I try to write about what I want I end up heading towards some drama with some spiritual message. It's not bad to do that, but I'm really not interested in writing about that. It's all so boring to me and old hat, like haven't most people made peace with their parents. According to my screen writing teacher, no. I don't understand any of my impetus to write anymore and I'm starting not to care either because I can't tell what people will like or not like. I only know what I like, what interests me, what compels me to write. Everytime I try to second guess what a reader or audience will like, the story falls flat on its face and people go how boring.

Does this mean I should follow my own intuition and just keep writing all the weird stuff that I like and to stop caring about what other people like? It's obvious to me now that I am totally clueless about the general public's taste. God, I just hate this. I'm tired of being weird, different and freaky. I honestly just want to be like everybody else, but everytime I try to think like other people I fail. It's such a lonely existence for me sometimes. It's so my karma though, and how can I fight my own karma?

I know, I'm complaining about this gift that I have. What I'm really interesting in writing about, other people really like, even though I always have the feeling that nobody would ever read or carfe about this except for me. When I try to write for an audience or a reader, I fail. So the lesson is I guess to just write to please myself, because everytime I think I'm writing to please other people I fail. It's all so confusing to me but if it works and places less stress on me, I'm all for it. It feels so weird to just write for myself without any thought to others, but I'm willing to give it a try. Writing to please myself and no one else, what a concept. I've gone done every road with my writing except that one and it's the last road, so I have to take it and see what happens.

Since there's been a discussion on my church Yahoo Group about the origins of liberalism and capitalism, I started researching books to read on the subject. I came across The Prince by Machiavelli and I was reminded of how my first love in college used to tell me I was "The Machiavellian Princess". I never knew what he meant by that since I had never read the book and when I asked him, he said that he saw me in the future as a chain smoking, three time divorced, corporate VP on my fourth husband and with three bratty kids.

As I was 18 when he predicted my future, I was naturally flattered. Me, corporate VP, how strange. As I grew older, I came to realized it was one of those backhanded compliments. But then I think he sort of thought of himself as the Machiavellian Prince, so of course, I had to be the Princess.

Funny isn't it, that being politically aware as I am, that I never bothered to take a political science course. If I had taken one, as all my friends in college did, I would have had to read Machiavelli. My first love said I would have aced Political Science, but at the time, I didn't know I was interested politics and politics was a boring subject to me since I had grown up in a politically aware household.

Well, I never did grow up to be the chain smoking corporate VP, although at some corps I worked at, I was on the periphery of that elite circle of employees. As soon as I started working, I knew i didn't want to be under the pressure of a management job. Oh sure, I was curious, but not curious enought to really want it and they're right when they say, to get to the top, you've got to want it bad, real bad.

At my job prior to the one I'm at now, I worked for a female CIO. She liked me and I was hired to be her financial analyst of sorts. It was my job to see that she didn't spend too many millions of dollars and to keep track of the millions she was spending. We liked each other and became very good friends, like sisters sort of. She was older and I saw her as my hardworking successful sister.

I got to see first hand what it was like to be a female in a top position and what I saw was frightening. People at the job knew we were close, so they loved telling me all the rumors they'd heard about her. Everyone thought she was incompetent and had slept with the CEO at a previous job to get this one, at least that was the rumor. Everyone below her wanted to be her or be close to her. I was close to her because of my job, it's not something I coveted, it was a function of my job. And I will admit, I wanted to be her when I first started, but after seeing how many people hated her and all the shit they said about her, I decided that being in a position of that much power in a corporation is so not worth the trouble.

Everything she did was looked at through a microscope. If she was too friendly to a male manager, everyone thought she was sleeping with him. Her clothes, her hair, her shoes, her choice of laptop and even her jewerly were all up for discussion. She was lucky she was a perfect size 4 or the discussion would have very nasty. My boss worked her bunnies off and she was still criticized. But she was a cool customer. She never lost her temper, she was always professional and I knew people in the office often remarked how professional she was at all times. She never let anyone hear her real opinions except for me and the director that hired me. She was always cheerful and optimistic and always coming up with new projects. And I knew the stress of the job got to her, because she told me she could only sleep 4 or 5 hours a night.

If I needed it confirmed again, why I didn't want to be a corporate VP, she confirmed it. My last love, Brian, like my first love, Michael, told me he could see me as a VP of some company. He kept encouraging me to get that kind of position. It's all so strange that he would say that, because he knew I hated the whole VP thing. He just kept saying I would be very good at it because I understood office politics and could drive a project to completion. Needless to say, I still have yet to become a corporate VP and have no intention of doing so, if I can help it.

So, I guess it's about time to read some Machiavelli after all these years. Maybe I will finally be able to see what two of the most important loves of my life have said I have a instinctive knack for. Besides, I want to be very well versed in the origins of capitalism and liberalism, so I can add some decent feedback to my church 9/11 discussion one of these days.

I still have such a long way to to go on my studies. I want to read Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith, reread Plato and Aristotle, Mills, Hobbes and Burke. And that's just the origins part. But Machiavelli is a good place to start since he and his theories seem to be an odd letmotif running through my life.

Monster's Ball is a good movie. I only watched it because Halle Berry was nominated for an academy award and I wanted to see her performance. She is playing against type, like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, and I think you get nominated just because other actors voting know how hard it is to play against your type. She did a good job although I'm not quite sure this performance is Oscar worthy. Halle did a much better performance in Warren Beatty's Bulworth and she wasn't nominated in that year, so if she gets an Oscar, I think it will be because she was neglected for Bulworth.

Bulworth was such a brilliant movie. Too bad the critics ignored it, although Warry Beatty was nominaed for the screenplay.

And Mr. Billy Bob Thornton. I couldn't imagine why women like Laura Dern and Angelina Jolie were so into this guy, but this movie showed me why. God, the man is hot! He was oozing southern gentlemanly charm; that little boyishness, the manners and the cruelty just below the surface but tempered by gentleness and those manners and that cute accent. Damn, that combination of traits is attractive in a man. He's like your father, your first crush in grade school, your first boyfriend and your fantasy caveman all rolled into one. It's a powerful combination. Nice body too.

Just for fun, I read all the movie reviews just to see what the critics were saying. I'm really starting the hate Salon.com. Their review of this movie was horrid. They rant and rage for no apparent reason over really stupid details of a movie and then give you three sentences about the movie. Maybe they don't undestand movies and that's why the rant and rage for most of it and then give you a 5th grade book report. Whoever is reviewing their movies should read some Pauline Kael and Andrew Saris movie review to see the real movie critics at work. Maybe I'm too old for their reading audience, but I like movie reviews to be philosophical and written from the perspective of someone who loves movies and knows them. I don't think movie reviews written by someone who wouldn't know a great movie if it sat down next to them and slapped them upside the head.

When a company doesn't make any money, you have to wonder why. People like to make excuses about slow business periods, not enough exposure, etc. They never tell you that the company isn't making any money maybe because they have a really bad product. Well, Salon.com isn't doing well financially because they have sucky product.

But I don't know. Maybe I'm not hip enough, not GenX enough like their typical reader but I know a bad movie review when I read one.

My flu or maybe it was bad allergic reactions from all the pollen are gone now. Thank god! This was Day 11. I slept through the night last night for the first time without having to wake up and cough for 10 minutes straight.

The new eating plan is going well. I had the worse caffeine withdrawal headache on Tuesday and I had to down tons of aspirin to get through the rest of the day. I still like drinking a hot beverage in the morning so I make decaf coffee instead. I'm a little more tired in the afternoon at work, bu I can't tell if my exhaustion is from lack of sleep or lack of caffeine.

I have my appointment in Berkeley tomorrow with my holistic healer. He's supposed to let me know if the parasite killer pills are working. I think they are. My jeans are looser this week but I don't know if the cause is from going off sugar, caffeine and carbos or from my parasites dying off. Maybe it's a combination of both.

I filed my taxes last night. What a drag! It makes me think about becoming a republican. I pay so much in taxes. I never wanted to own property, but it seems like the mortgage interest deduction is the only tax break left. I think I might have made a mistake in calculating my taxes because I didn't include my charitable deductions for the year. I'll check tonight. I don't think it will make a difference but I'll review anyway. If I can't get the deduction this year, I know I'll be able to take the deduction next year and add last year's charity giving to get a bigger deduction.

My church is starting to discuss the war on terrorism. Finally. I thought most of the church people would be left over peacenik hippies but I should have known better. They support the war on terrorism like me. Even this one woman who is the resident earth mommy in the church said she was called a "hawk" by her liberal friends. I was thinkig about finding another church, but where am I going to find a more educated and faithful group of people like the church members?

The majority of the members are very well educated, either through private school education and/or through Ivy League or Ivy League type colleges and universities. Many of them have two or three degrees under their belt. Most of them are fairly well to do. And they're pragmatic and centrists like me. This 9/11 discussion has quelled my desire to leave the church for now. I like these people and I'm afraid if I leave to go to another church, I won't find the level of intellect I have at my church.

The church members are just so smart. There's a discussion going on about the origins of liberalism and the free market and is the christian church compatible. Members are bringing in history, quoting Adam Smith and John Locke, recommending books to read and are seriously looking at the effect of 9/11 on faith. It's all so interesting. There are those few members who argue current events without any thought to history like we live in some kind of vacuum or who spout the liberal party line without any philosophical understanding of the origins of capitalism, liberalism and the free market. Their comments blaringly announcing their naivete, their ignorance and their immature way of trying to categorize everything down to black and white issues.

It's like HELLO! What kind of world do you live in? It hasn't been black and white world for a long time, if ever. They don't want to talk details because they say it's esoteric. Liars! They don't want to talk details because then we get to see that these same 60's type don't know shit about history or economic theory or the history of their own beloved liberalism. Whatever. Thank god, the rest of the church members aren't like this. They use their intellect and their faith to discuss serious issues. They don't buy the soundbites they hear on TV or the media hype. They know the world is complicated and in a zillion shades of gray. And finally, they know that you need faith to understand it all.